HIST 3160: Women in United States History Guide

Overview

Finding Books

Classic Library Catalog WMU's Classic online catalog (also known as WestCat), is used to identify books (including electronic books), government documents, journals, audio and video, slides, music scores, and other items in the University Libraries' collections. The catalog can be searched by title, author, subject heading, keyword, call number, and more.

Advanced Search
This is an option for searching WestCat. Multiple words or phrases that are "your language," not known to be from the official subject heading list, can be entered. However, the system only finds books that use the same word or words in their catalog entries. As a result, no book in our collection may contain all of the words and phrases that you enter. If no titles appear, try synonyms or fewer headings--or select a heading(s) from the Library of Congress Subject Headings. When a list of titles appears, review them and then select those that might contain relevant information. On the screens that appear after clicking on a title, there are official Library of Congress subject headings that are linked to other books on the same topic.

WorldCat Comprehensive catalog of books and other materials in libraries around the world. Contains millions of records in hundreds of languages. Nonbook materials include (among other publication formats) the titles of journals and magazines, manuscripts, maps, electronic resources, websites, computer programs, music scores, films, slides, sound recordings, conference proceedings, and videotapes. Items located through WorldCat must be requested through Interlibrary Loan unless they are also listed in the WMU Libraries catalog.

Finding Articles

America: History and Life Indexes and abstracts 2,100 journals, book and media reviews, and dissertations about the history and culture of the US and Canada. Searches by subject, author, title, time period, or document type. Coverage from 1964 to the present. Updated monthly.
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Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science) The Arts & Humanities Citation Index is a multidisciplinary database that indexes 1,144 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, and selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals. Coverage is from 1975 to the present.

Contemporary Women's Issues Full-text access to information on women around the world from a variety of journals and other publications gathered from nonprofit groups as well as governmental agencies. Coverage is from 1990 to the present.

America's Historical Newspapers 1690-1922 Full text images of articles from early American newspapers for over 700 newspapers from 34 Eastern states, including three Michigan Newspapers, Kalamazoo Gazette (1872-1919), Grand Rapids Press (1893-1922), and Jackson Citizen Patriot (1849-1858).

ERIC. An excellent databases for education majors to search for lesson plans and curriculam guides for teaching women's history. Index and abstracts over 780 journals and ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) document on microfiche. Covers education and related fields such as counsiling, psychology, and the social sciences. The ERIC documents are available on microfiche in the Education Library.

GenderWatch An historical and current perspective on the evolution of women's and gender issues. Full-text articles from over 200 scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, as well as books, and reports. Coverage from 1970.

HarpWeek Full-text as well as images from the important American magazine Harper's Weekly. Coverage: 1857-1912.

Historical Abstracts Indexes and abstracts over 2,100 journals, books, and dissertations in world history, excluding the US and Canada, from 1450 to the present. Searches by subject, author, title, time period, or document type. Coverage: 1955 to present. Updated monthly.
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Historical Newspapers Search all of these newspapers at once or individually for full-text articles in this index:
Atlanta Constitution (1868 - 1939)
Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003)
The Chicago Defender (1905 - 1975)
Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1986)
Christian Science Monitor (1908 - 1995)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
Los Angeles Times (1881 - 1986)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
The New York Times (1851 - 2005)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)
The Wall Street Journal (1889 - 1991)
The Washington Post (1877 - 1992)

Humanities Abstracts Indexes more than 465 major humanities journals in art, history, literature, philosophy, religion, music, and related areas. Coverage from 1984, abstracts from 1994 to the present.

Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective Indexes core journals published in the 20^th century in North America and Europe. Coverage 1907-1984.
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19th Century Masterfile
This electronic index to the nineteenth century includes poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 4,000,000+ Citations from both popular and scholarly journals published from 1802 to 1906. WMU owns quite a few of these titles.

Readers' Guide Retrospective Indexes the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States from 1890 to 1982. Some of these periodicals published short stories and book reviews.
Print: AI 3 .R48 (Ref.) 1904-98
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Digital Collections

American Civil War: Letters & Diaries This full text database includes more than 100,000 pages written by over 2,000 persons, primarily letters and diaries from the Civil War. Also includes biographies and an extensive bibliography.

American Memory Multimedia collections from the Library of Congress of digitized documents, photographs, sound recordings, motion pictures, and texts. Over 100 collections, including, for example, African-American pamphlets, Chautauqua flyers, Depression photographs, Coca-Cola advertising, and the papers of Alexander Graham Bell, to name just a few.

In the First Person: Index to Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories, and Other Personal Narratives This index lets users perform searches within letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies that are freely available on the Web and in Alexander Street databases. Users can access thousands of personal narratives in English from archives and repositories everywhere. Includes links to full text, audio, and video whenever available.

Making of America (Cornell University)

Making of America (University of Michigan) A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the ante-bellum period through Reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Includes over 4 million page images, representing close to 13,000 volumes of primary source materials, including books and periodicals. Cornell University has focused on the major journal literature of the period. The University of Michigan has focused on monographs.

Making of Modern Michigan
Hosted at Michigan State University, this is a full-text collaborative project involving more than 50 libraries in Michigan. It includes local history materials from Michigan communities, including such things as historical photographs, oral histories, family papers, genealogical materials, and much more. One can search by keyword, or browse through the subject, institution and type of material indexes.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries Over 150,000 pages of published and unpublished diaries and letters by over 1,300 women in the US and Canada from the colonial period to 1950. All ethnic groups, ages, classes, and geographical regions are included. Users can search by keyword, time period, place, marital status, nationality, and other variables.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000: Scholar's Edition A collection of full text books, pamphlets, articles, documents and images of American women's reform movements over the last 400 years including special subjects such as African-American Women and the Equal Rights Debate in the 1920s. Includes the bibliographic dictionary Notable American Women 1907-1950.
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Biographical Information

African American Biographical Directory. Covers African Americans from 1790-1950. Includes biographical information, photographs and illustrations of African Americans as well as profiles and full-text sketches that provide both biographical detail and narratives chronicling the lives of Black Americans.

American National Biography. The landmark American National Biography offers portraits of almost 18,000 men and women--from all eras and walks of life --whose lives have shapes the nation. No living individuals are listed. More than decade in preperation, the American National Biography is the first biographical resource of this scope to be published in more than sixty years. The American National Biography is published by Oxford University Press under the auspices of the American council Learned Societies.

Great Lives from American History: American Women Series.
HQ 1412 .G74 1995 (Ref)
A 5-volume set covering the lives and achievements of the American women. Arranged alphabetically, the 2-3 page articles are authorized by scholars and have short, annotated bibliographies.

National Organization for Women (NOW) NOW is one of the largest and oldest feminist organizations in the United States. The site contains helpful links defining the organization's stand on Key Issues and to important feminist resources.

Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary E98 .W8 N37x 2001(Ref)
Brief, signed biographical sketches with references, arranged alphabetically. Subject index and listings by tribal affiliation and area of specialization.

Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary CT 3260 .N57 (Ref)
A classic, 3-volume set that provides biographical articles on over 1,800 deceased women from the United States, many of whom are not represented in the standard biographical source, The Dictionary of American Biography. A fourth volume covering the modern period was added in 1980. Signed scholarly articles with bibliographies.

Notable Black American Women E 185.96 .N68 1992 (Reference Desk Collection)
This 2-volume set includes signed articles on over 500 women born between 1730 and 1958. Each entry discusses the individual's contributions to American life and includes bibliographic references. There are also useful indexes by subject and area of endeavor.

Notable Hispanic American Women E 184 .S75 N68 1998 (Ref)
Includes over 300 individuals, most of whom are living; bibliographies provided; subject and occupational and nationality indexes.

Who's Who on the Web Provides brief, usually up to date and usually reliable biographical information about more than 1.3 million people. Entries focus on frequently needed facts, such as birthdates, education, career, publications, and other objective data supplied by the individual to the editors. Who's Who in America biographies go back to 1607. The coverage of the rest of the Marquis Who's Who series is from 1985 to the present.

Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated See Biographies Plus Illustrated.

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia HQ 1115 .W6 1999 (Ref)
This comprehensive, multi-volume encyclopedia offers over 10,000 biographical entries on women worldwide, many written by academics and specialists. Includes many photographs and suggestions for further reading.

Women of the Hall Includes short biographies of the women inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Includes contemporary as well as historical figures. Accompanied by photographs.

Encyclopedias, Handbooks and Chronologies

Early American Women: A Documentary History, 1600-1900. 2nd ed. HQ 1410 .E15 2002 (Ref)
Presents a chrological overview of women in American history,through primary source documents such as letters, dairies and other writings, from the colonial period through the 19th century.

Handbook of American Women's History HQ1410 .H36 2000 (Ref)
Covers events, organizations, people, law cases, terms, and other topics. Occasional lengthy treatments. Includes bibliographic references and photographs.

Living the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998 Developed by the National Women's History Project information on the history of the movement, a timeline, today's issues,A timeline of the Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998, and links to related topics.

Milestones: A Chronology of American Women's History. HQ1410 .W434 1997(Ref)
Brief entries with some illustrations of events and persons in U.S.wmen's history from 1492 to 1995.Name and subject index included.

What American Women Did, 1789-1920. HQ1154.C665x 2001 (Ref)
Presents a year-by-year chronology of the achievments and actions of American women from the beginning of the Republic through the end of World War I and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.Includes many historical photographs.

Women's Studies Encyclopedia HQ1115 .W645 1999 (Ref)
RTopics are arranged in an alphabetical sequence. Focus is on the American experience.

Women's Issues HQ1115 .W6425 1997 (Ref)
A 3-volume set organized by topic around issues, events, persons, and organizations, historical and contemporary. Substantive essays with frequent annotated bibliographies.

Women's Rights in the United States: A Documentary History. HQ1236.5.U6 W68 1994(Ref)
Important primary documents on significant events or issues.Included are speeches,letters,court cases,government reports.Arranged chronologically from Biblical times to 1993.Index and glossary included.

Intenet Gateways to Women's Studies

University of Maryland Women's Studies Database.
Produced by the University of Maryland, this is a gateway site for one of the major women's studies programs in the U.S. Provides links to conferences, calls for papers, syllabi, and Web resources on a variety of topics. For current issues,the "Gender Issues" categotry provides links on topics such as the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, and violence and women. Includes a search engine.

University of Wisconsin Women's Studies Librarian.
Gateway site maintained by the Women's Studies Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The SubjectListing of Women and Gender Sources provides subject acess to a wealth of Web resources.

WSSLINKS: Women and Gender Studies Web Sites
Maintained by the Women's Studies Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries, this site provides access to resources in women's and gender studies. Arrangement is by broad topics such as business, education, history health, music, and many more.

Additional WMU Resources

For more in-depth information,consult the following guides:

Subject Guide to American History.

Subject Guide to Women's Studies.

Finding Primary Documents in WestCat and on the Web.
Developed by WMU Libraries, this guide offers links to several excellent sites that discuss the historical research process, directories of historical resources on the Web, and links to collections of primarily documents easily accessible on the Web.

Web Resources

American Women's History: A Research Guide Hosted by Middle Tennessee State University, this site provides citations to print and Internet reference sources, as well as to selected large primary source collections. The guide also provides information about the tools researchers can use to find additional books, articles, dissertations, and primary sources.

Civil War Women: Primary Sources on the Internet Hosted by Duke University, this site contains a number of primary source documents relating to the role and experiences of women during the American Civil War.

Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921. Part of the Library of Congress's "American Memory" project,this site consists of 167 books,pamphlets and other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign;includes a chronology of thee suffrage struggle.

Women's Studies Resources Links to news stories, and information organized by topic, including a strong section on the history maintained by Karla Tonella at the University of Iowa.

Ask A Librarian

Maria A. Perez-Stable
maria.perez-stable@wmich.edu
269-387-5322
Last updated: August 2009